


we will be chasing a starlight

by ofstarsserene



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M, masriel soulmate au, or marisa defying fate and making a huge mess of it all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:14:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22603789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofstarsserene/pseuds/ofstarsserene
Summary: the idea is that your eyes are blind to the stars until your daemon settles, and the day it assumes it’s final form, the stars appear and give you a message, a direction, a guiding light that leads to your destiny. wherever the stars lead you, there lies your purpose, and there you’ll eventually find your soulmate.
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27





	we will be chasing a starlight

It’s written in the stars, that’s what they say. Your destiny piercing the night sky the day your daemon settles.

Marisa Delamare dreads the thought. Frankly, she hates it – how girls her age have the glint in their eyes, proudly showing off their daemon’s final form. They whisper in the corners of the classroom, giggling about the possibility of following that twinkling star and meeting their soulmate.

Marisa is thirteen, but her daemon is yet to settle. Her mother says she is just a late bloomer, but Marisa knows it’s her apprehension that keeps the creature ever-changing. After all, he is her soul’s reflection. He hates the idea as much as she does.

And so every night she looks out the window, and her sky is pitch-black, and clean, and perfect. She would give everything for it to stay that way, because stars mean destiny, and destiny means something set in stone, and Marisa doesn’t want that. She wants to make her own choices, choose her own path.

But it cannot last forever. All children must grow up.

It’s the middle of December, and the freezing wind sweeps into the room, making Marisa shiver in her bed. She gets up to close the window – and it is as if time stops, while Marisa’s eyes adjust to the whirlwind of stars rupturing the sky above her. She cries, clenching her head in her hands, and when a minute later she looks at the sky again, it’s one star that pulsates with light, brighter than the others, blinding her with longing to follow.

Polaris. The North Star.

Marisa gasps, images of deep snow and the Northern Lights flashing in front of her eyes. She can swear that for a moment she sees the lights of the Aurora next to the star that calls for her – but she blinks, and it’s gone. She must have dreamt it.

Her daemon, now forever a golden monkey, reaches for her. She caresses his golden fur and feels a sting at her heart. Marisa jerks her hand away, flinching. Her gaze follows the North Star again, and she fears that if she doesn’t get back to bed this instant, she won’t resist the urge to jump from the window sill.

She retreats back to the safety of her room, her daemon screeching for her. The next time he reaches for her hand, she smacks him.

Two days later there is a snowstorm, and Marisa finally feels at peace.

***

Marisa is eighteen and engaged to be married to the most boring man she has ever met. She relishes the thought though. She doesn’t care that people look at her funny – they will change their tune when she becomes the most influential woman in London.

Edward Coulter is almost twice her age, and his daemon is a funny-looking spaniel. Marisa chooses Edward out of spite. A man like him, a rising politician with his steady composure and parlour drinks, will never go North. Marisa is sure they are not destined together, and that’s what strengthens her resolve to marry him. If it’s not destiny, then she is the one in control.

***

It’s four years later, and recently Marisa has been filled with such longing that it physically aches. She knows she defies destiny, and that’s why it is cruel to her, that’s why it hurts so much. But she made her choice, and she ignores her desires and her enigmatic dreams, where a man she doesn’t recognise breaks the Aurora open and disappears into the light. It’s all a blur, a hurricane of snow, a faceless silhouette, an urge to follow him to wherever that path leads. Marisa takes a deep breath, watching him go.

She doesn’t need to see the man’s face to know that, if they ever met, he would claim half of her heart for himself, and her soul would bleed for him, like a glacier melting from fiery flame.

Marisa wakes up in cold sweat, next to her snoring husband. She climbs out of bed and rushes downstairs. She needs a strong drink and a breath of fresh February air to numb the pain. With a glass of wine in her hand, she opens the kitchen window and stares at the sky, almost blinded by the violent light that her Polaris pulsates with. Marisa wants to scream and curse at whoever is weaving this unwanted fate of hers, because she will not be rendered a powerless puppet. London is her chosen playground. London is her kingdom. And North… North is her cruel sentence and her punishment. She will _never_ go there.

She wants to scream, but she doesn’t.

She shuts the window violently and goes back to the bedroom.

***

It’s her husband’s idea, the spring festival. His campaign is in full motion, and he needs to enchant the public somehow. Marisa is there to work her magic, of course. After all, enchanting and scheming is her area of expertise.

She smiles her way through a number of tiresome festival events. A horse race, a fundraiser, a charity ball – and finally a lavish party at their mansion, a jewel to her husband’s crown of a King’s advisor. Marisa gracefully flows in between politicians and scholars and members of aristocracy, her monkey following her every move with certain agitation. She doesn’t understand what makes her daemon so nervous, and she is irritated, because he is physically trembling, and it makes her stomach turn. She hates these moments of weakness, unable to control the way her very soul is terrified of something that is yet to come.

The first thing she notices is how the air in the room changes. Everyone is suddenly quieter, and loud chatter turns into forced conversation and restrained whispers. She asks Pauline, a visiting scholar from St. Sophia, what the matter is.

Pauline nods at the door (“You have interesting guests, Marisa.”), and as Marisa turns to look at the reason for this commotion, her monkey makes a faint noise that only she can hear. The sound finds its way into her bones. It’s the sound of utter defeat.

Marisa sees a man with a snow leopard daemon, and it feels like a gust of frozen wind.

“Who is this?”

“Oh, you really don’t know?” Pauline seems genuinely surprised. “That is Lord Asriel Belacqua. The man is insanely rich and has immense influence. I can see why your husband invited him. But he shouldn’t have bothered – everyone knows that Lord Asriel spends all his money on his Northern expeditions. The man is obsessed with it!”

Marisa watches as the man navigates the room, shaking hands with those he knows and deems worthy of greeting. Meanwhile, his daemon stretches in front of the fireplace, completely ignoring the crowd.

The snow leopard yawns as Lord Asriel reaches for a drink, and Marisa’s monkey scratches at her ankle. Whatever the creature wants, Marisa is not ready to deal with it right now. Her eyes dart to her husband, who is currently making his way to welcome Lord Asriel himself. She watches, frozen in place, as they exchange pleasantries, and in a second Lord Asriel’s eyes meet hers, and everything falls into place.

In his eyes Polaris shines. Marisa can almost hear destiny’s cruel laughter.

***

It’s ridiculous, how well their daemons get along. Marisa’s monkey barely interacts with Edward’s daemon, but whenever Asriel’s snow leopard is near, he runs and settles next to her, sometimes nuzzling her, sometimes tugging playfully at her fur.

Marisa cannot control the creature, just as she cannot control her own desire to have Asriel around. At first she detests it – how he possesses her without even trying, how she aches for him when the hands that hold her at night are not his. 

Very soon she becomes tired of fighting the pull that he has on her heart. 

She writes to him, and they meet – at the library, at the museum, at a lecture. They meet only in public, and thus it is safe, because Marisa would be a fool to deny that it is Asriel that she’s wanted so badly without even knowing him, it is him she’s been missing all these years, so it would be foolish to stay alone with him. 

Yet, they still meet, because Marisa hates the idea of him being in control. If Asriel is crawling under her skin, she’ll make him bow to her first. It’s a dangerous game she plays. How she grins at him when she snatches a book she needs out of his hands. How their shoulders brush when they sit too close to each other, not really paying attention to a fellow Jordan scholar presenting his findings in a dimly lit room.

It’s just a game that she plays, and she thinks she is winning.

But their daemons fit together so perfectly, and it’s only a matter of time before Marisa wakes up, enveloped in pleasant warmth and feeling Asriel’s lips on her bare shoulder. Early morning is filled with soft caresses and lazy kisses, both of them sated with each other and quite tired after a restless night. 

Marisa never realised she felt like a half-person before, but it’s now that she knows she is finally whole.

Asriel draws circles on her back, and Marisa smiles at him.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s a celestial map,” he says, deeply concentrated on his task. “This one is Ursa Minor, with your Polaris. This,” he draws another intricate shape, “is Draco, or dragon. There is a legend that the creature was killed by an ancient goddess and tossed into the sky, where it stays, forever frozen. And this,” Asriel draws a smaller shape and kisses the spot where his fingers have traced, “is Lyra, with my Vega.”

“So it was Vega that you followed?”

“Not exactly. I never cared to decipher what the stars meant. When Vega shone for me for the first time, I took notice and moved on. I already knew what I wanted to be.”

“And what is that?”

“Someone who doesn’t let shiny rocks in the sky choose for him.”

Marisa laughs quietly, a short huff of air out her nose. This impossible man, the fabric of his soul matching hers in so many aspects…

“Why did you travel North then?”

“I’ve always been fascinated with it. Vast, glorious territory, and the Magisterium has no power over it. It feels magnificent, this freedom.”

Marisa rolls on her left side to see Asriel’s face clearly.

“Did you know that Vega was once a pole star?” she asks, reaching to caress his cheek. “There are calculations suggesting that it was such a star thousands of years ago and that it will be a pole star once more in the future.”

“It’s all in the rotation.”

“Exactly.” Marisa smiles. “So, perhaps, you did follow your star to the North without even knowing.”

“Perhaps I did.” Asriel grins at her, his intention quite clear in his eyes. “And if it was indeed Vega that in the end led me here, I cannot complain much.”

He kisses her, rough and demanding, and stars and constellations are the last thing on Marisa’s mind.

***

Dreams don’t trouble Marisa that much when she is with Asriel.

Until one night it’s the Aurora cracked open all over again, and the man’s daemon is a snow leopard, and Asriel has the eyes of a madman. 

She wakes up with a gasp, knowing they have tainted themselves with sin and they will create something they shouldn’t. 

And that’s why she runs from him at the break of dawn.

***

Of course there is a child. How could it not be. Marisa is convinced that destiny hates her now, for ignoring it for so long, and that’s why her life is a terrible mess.

***

And then the child is born, looking so much like Asriel.

And then Edward is murdered.

And it’s hell on earth, and she doesn’t even expect anything else.

***

At eighteen, Marisa swore she would never go North.

At twenty-three, she fell for a man who brought North to her.

At thirty-five, Marisa Coulter averts her eyes, refusing to look at the Aurora, ripped apart by her lover, just as the destiny foretold in her dreams all those years ago.

“Marisa, come with me.” Asriel beckons. “You and I, together. We could take this universe apart and put it back together again.”

He pulls her in for a kiss, and the words that she said to Father MacPhail are blatant lies, because she melts, and she burns, and it’s twelve years ago all over again – Asriel’s hands molding her, their souls colliding just as the universe intended.

If Marisa could have foreseen this, she would have jumped from that window the night Polaris called for her for the first time. Perhaps, she would’ve died, and none of this would have happened. 

Perhaps, she would have been swept away by the Aurora, to be delivered into Asriel’s arms without any obstacles, any delay, and they would have saved themselves years of searching, wondering and aching. No scandal, no chaos – just two people, equally stubborn and equally brilliant.

But little Marisa Delamare couldn’t have predicted all that would happen, and now Asriel’s lips taste of dried blood while the light of another world – unknown, impossible, heretical – outlines their bodies, pressed tightly together.

They are too late. Fate is their enemy. There will be no peace for either of them.

She pulls away from him, because they fit together, and it hurts, and Lyra – their Lyra, _her_ Lyra – is in this world, and Marisa will hold on to her daughter with all her might.

“I want her with everything I have”, Marisa whispers, and the truth of it seems strange on her tongue after so many lies uttered.

She leaves her lover with tears in her eyes, and the moment Asriel crosses the bridge to another world, she feels it, because it’s half of her soul disappearing into the abyss.

It’s the faint sound of destiny’s vile laughter, just as the day she and Asriel met. Marisa listens closely, suddenly still.

But it’s only the wind.


End file.
